The Basis of Union

The Single-Minded Confessional Character of Basis of Union of the Uniting Church in Australia I will make some comments about the character of our Basis of Union, which is authoritative for the Uniting Church and to which the ACC has pledged loyalty, via a recent experience of real Methodism. Late last year, Dr. Kenneth Collins, a visiting Professor from Asbury Theological Seminary in the USA, rose to the pulpit in ChungDong First Methodist Church in Seoul and began his sermon with these words: Thank you Dr. Nelson for that kind and gracious introduction. I bring you greetings from the church that’s in Wilmore, Kentucky. I’m grateful to be among you in Seoul, Korea. I know that I have many brothers and sisters here because we worship the same Lord. I testify to Jesus Christ that he is the Son of God. That he rose from the dead. That death could not hold him. That he was raised by the spirit of holiness. And if that spirit of holiness that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is in us, then we too shall rise. It’s vivid, concrete language, isn’t it? Perhaps this kind of language these days in a Pentecostal Church but is it ever heard in a Uniting Church? Actually, Collins called his sermon, “Warning: Sin is Dangerous to Your Health”. He went on to expound, along those great Methodist lines, that the Holy Spirit is God present in the world and given to the church, that God graciously justifies and regenerates all who trust in Jesus Christ, and that God calls all believers into entire sanctification in a moment of full surrender. And we sang some Methodist hymns according to John Wesley’s instructions at the front of his Selected Hymns of 1761: “Sing lustily and with good courage… Sing modestly… Sing in time… Above all sing spiritually...” After the sermon, Dr. Collins lectured for an hour or two. He took us through John Wesley’s life; how Wesley’s father – an Anglican ordained – and his mother – an early strong Christian influence, formed his youthful experience, how Wesley determined early on at Oxford University to seek the full Christian life, how he later sought to preach to natives in Savannah but failed, how he then met prayerful Moravian Anabaptists and got an inkling, 15 years after ordination, of something more in the whole sanctified life Christ calls us to and how the Holy Spirit empowers us to have it, and how through tireless efforts Wesley established “bands” of believers who became, later, the congregations of the Methodist church. Kenneth Collins has published many books on John Wesley, including The Scripture Way of Salvation which is an easy introduction, and the recent Holy Love and the Shape of Grace , which is a complete and solid read. “It”, Collins remarked, “Contains everything I know about Wesley.” Collins lives and preaches like his subject. Afterwards, the introducer of Collins, Dr. Nelson, ( a visiting lecturer at the Asian Center for Theological Studies, a small seminary of 700 students in YangPyeong where I live), remarked that he felt he’d just attended a complete course of lectures. Collins’ was a welcoming message 1 of salvation for all – Asbury, after whom Collins’ theological seminary was named, was “Arminian” and a famous early Methodist preacher in the USA. Collins’ was refreshing for us something that we’d known before and have forgotten. Collins was giving explanation to some parts of Methodism that have lingered in the church but have been snuffed down by modernism. Instead of flirting with ideas that we can be what we want to be Collins called us back to a gospel of Christ who comes to each of us as He who changes us with forgiveness and sanctifies us. Christian theology only ever happens in church foyers. John Calvin said much the same in the 16 th Century Europe, like St. Athanasius long before him in the 4 th Century Africa: The sole purpose of theology is to help Christians better understand the Christian faith so that they might come to deeper faith. The rest is irrelevant nonsense. Now, if we look at Basis of Union to find this kind of real Methodism, not very much of it is there. Wesley is named in paragraph 12 of the Basis of Union. Wesley’s 44 sermons of 1793 are lumped together with key documents for Presbyterians and Congregationalists: the Scots Confession of Faith (1560), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), and the Savoy Declaration (1658). All together, they are documents, “she (the church) will listen to”. “Listen to” sounds vague and unhelpful to: 1. identify differences of emphasis and manner, and theological points between these documents, and the traditions they represent, and 2. then try to reconcile and preserve them in a functioning Uniting Church. Listening is a dangerous method if is the kind of listening that was practiced by the Doctrine Commission four years ago when it approached migrant congregations’ view on the ordination of homosexuals and then totally ignored what it heard. Methodism could easily get lost among the clamor of other views put stridently. However, the Basis of Union puts a codicil on the “listening” as to what the reader (ministers and instructors in the Uniting Church) will be listening for, “… so that the congregation of Christ’s people may again and again be reminded of the grace which justifies them through faith, of the centrality of the person and work of Christ the justifier, and of the need for a constant appeal to Holy Scripture.” This is Calvin’s and Athanasius’ idea of theology – it is always useful to the life of believers to whom it is addressed. Wesley would agree. Even so, this codicil doesn’t necessarily help preserve Methodism in the Uniting Church. It looks like the particular and great Methodist heritage that Collins’ preached and lectured can be quashed out of the Basis of Union, and any semblance of it out of the life of worshippers in the Uniting Church. We need to back to the origins of the Basis of Union to see if this was an intended outcome. 2 And to do that, we need to go back to the ecclesiastical mood of the mid twentieth century. It was the high tide of Ecumenism. Thomas Oden, a leader of the confessional movements, explained that ecumenism peaked at the 1956 Evanston General Assembly of the World Council of Churches. (According to Oden, ecumenism was all downhill away from Christ after that.) However, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, the General Conference of the Methodist Church of Australasia and the Executive Council of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand to appoint all together 25 men, all ordained except three, to a Joint Commission on Church Union. They were charged with finding a basis of union for the three churches. The joint committee met three times for periods of at least three days. As a result, the Joint Commission published a report in 1959, titled, The Faith of the Church. All members of the Commission declared that their discussions should uncover a basis for unity in a commonly held Christian Faith, and a common understanding of what pertains to the true structure of the Church’s life. 1 Dr. J. Davis McCaughey was convener of the Presbyterian delegation to the Joint Commission on Church Union. One of his first acts as the first President of the Uniting Church in 1978 was to republish the 1959 report. His purpose was that, “It might still recall members of the church to a serious attention to Scripture, creed and confession.”2 This theme Davis struck in 1978 is apparent in the Basis of Union of 1971, and more so in 1959 report of the Joint Commission. It goes to the reason for the Uniting. McCaughey explained that a lot of the 1959 report got compressed into the Basis of Union, and some extra points added. There is quite a lot about Methodism in this 1959 report. The report is divided into two sections. The first section tries to establish where a common Christian faith can be found: in Scripture, the early creeds, and the Reformation confessions. (The commissioners had misgivings about ignorance of other Christian traditions not their own.) The second section sets out the essential faith all can hold to. Methodism is first considered in the first section on Reformation confession. Methodism is acknowledged as part of the evangelical emphasis on the believer’s immediate awareness of the Saviour. It is called, “…an intensely practical, spiritual and ethical movement seeking the conversion of men and their growth in holiness.”3 It is historically right but in the report it considered as one way of several to confession. 1 The Faith of the Church. The First Report of the Joint Commission of Church Union of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand, The Methodist Church of Australasia and the Presbyterian Church of Australia. The Joint Board of Christian Education of Australia and New Zealand 1978, p. 9 2 ibid, p. 8 3 Ibid p. 23 3 The report argues that it was the establishment of Methodism in the United States that led to the abbreviation of Anglicanism’s 39 Articles by removing those that have an English reference, 4 and other articles that had an Augustianian influence. The report also argues that, “Once separation became inevitable (from the C. of E. after John Wesley’s death), the movement became a Church requiring a basis and a structured life….

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